5 Tips for Proper Destruction of Confidential Documents

Whatever your type of business, all companies have acquired confidential data that needs occasional discarding. Whether it be employee information or customer information, destruction of confidential documents must be done in a secure way. If not, the results can be costly for your business. Here are five things your business can do to protect your data.

Businesses must identify all documents that need to be destroyed. The very first step in the process is to determine which documents are no longer needed to your business or those that you are no longer legally obligated to keep. Documents that are reaching the end of their required retention periods should then be destroyed.

Businesses should collect materials to be destroyed in a timely, efficient and secure manner. Often times, businesses leave data destruction to employees who shred documents whenever they might have free time. However, this is not the most efficient or secure way of running things as old documents may pile up for weeks or even months. All throughout that time, sensitive information is subject to be found.

Stored records held on old computer devices should not be forgotten. These stored records are also at risk. The location of these stored electronic devices should be in a secure location. These devices should also only be accessed be a few, necessary employees. All old electronic devices should also have a retention schedule that determines how long they should be in storage for.

Determine whether you want on site or off site data destruction. Whether you want a data destruction company to come to your place of business and destroy all confidential documents there or to take all documents to an off site location, you have options when it comes to how you want your data destroyed.

Find the right data destruction company for the job. In order to ensure that your data is destroyed in a secure and environmentally friendly way, be sure that the data destruction is ISO certified and that they offer you a certificate after the destruction process is complete.